


and what you see will be

by artfulacrostic



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Absent Parents, At least a little lol, But we only gloss over that, Canonical Character Death, Character Development, Character Study, Cmon folks lets make that a tag, Didnt want to add the major character death tag but if you've seen season 3 then u know, F/M, Good Babysitter Steve Harrington, I entered this fandom so late smh, Navel-Gazing, Past Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Post-Season/Series 03, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Friendship, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Spans all three seasons though, Steve Harrington-centric, Steve's bat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 12:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21446200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artfulacrostic/pseuds/artfulacrostic
Summary: Here's the thing: Steve Harrington was an ass.At least, until Will Byers disappeared, and Barbara Holland disappeared after that, and Nancy started hanging out with Jonathan Byers, and Steve royally screwed himself over by being the giant asshole he actually was.And then Jonathan beat him up in an alley, and Steve kind of had a crisis of self, and boy howdy, he did NOT have any idea where everything would go from there, but here he was, thanking his lucky stars anyway.
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Past Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler - Relationship, Steve Harrington & Dustin Henderson, Steve Harrington & Robin Buckley, Steve Harrington & The Party
Comments: 2
Kudos: 73





	and what you see will be

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooooo. I watched like the first season of Stranger Things maybe two years ago, annoyed by the hype, and thought it was fine (Dustin was and remains my favorite character), but then didn't watch anything after that until this month, when I caught up on the second and third seasons in approximately two weeks. And let me say: hooooo boy.  
I know some people don't like it after the first season, but the second season got me hooked, and the third was great, and now I'm here writing a ver y in depth character study for the character I swore I would never like in the first season because he wouldn't help Nancy look for Barb.  
What can I say; Steve and I have both changed.

Before it actually happened, Steve might not have believed that his defining moment of truth would come in the middle of getting his ass kicked seven ways to Sunday by Jonathan Byers.

The most important moment of his life wasn’t the first time he kissed Nancy Wheeler, or when he drove alone in his car after getting his license and felt freer than he’d ever been before. It wasn’t when Steve turned around against every instinct and walked back into a house with a monster, or when he realized that Nancy was lying to herself and to him about their relationship.

It wasn’t when he exchanged his bouquet for the bat he’d kept in his trunk for a year, and it wasn’t when he stepped out of the bus to fight monsters for the second time. It wasn’t getting a job on his own merit, without any interference from his dad, or even staying behind with Robin to get caught by the Russians so that Dustin and Erica would escape.

Steve Harrington actually found himself in the moment when he lay on the ground, staring up through the blood in his eyes at Jonathan, and realized that he deserved everything he was getting.

He was first set on the path to getting beaten bloody by the school yearbook photographer when he really noticed Nancy—no, not noticed. Saw. When he really _saw_ Nancy for the first time. He’d seen her around, of course. Hawkins wasn’t that big, and they’d been in school, only a year apart, for a long time. But the beginning of junior year was when he saw her for real.

Steve was dating Becky at the time, although it had only been a couple of weeks. He wasn’t really sure about her. Carol and Tommy agreed that she was hot, and they weren’t wrong, and Steve liked being distracted from his parents—namely, their conspicuous, too-frequent absences. Not to mention, he didn’t love third-wheeling all the time since Tommy had finally acquired the balls to ask Carol out for real. But the connection with Becky just wasn’t there, and it was on a Thursday afternoon that he decided he’d better break up with her. 

When Steve really thought about it honestly, she didn’t seem to like him much unless they were getting hot and heavy. Her expectations for their relationship were moving fast, and she wasn’t getting his hints to maybe back off just for the moment. They’d nearly gone all the way on Sunday, but Steve felt iffy about it, and claimed an upset stomach, and they stopped.

Sex with someone he really liked was one thing. He’d only really made out with his first girlfriend, Laurie, and they hadn’t lasted longer than a couple months, but they’d ended things on a good note when she moved away to Florida. Several months after that, he asked out Amy, his lab partner in biology, and they’d dated long enough to hook up more than once. They had laughed and fumbled their way through together, and he’d liked it. They always had a good time.

Sex was not the problem. Becky was just…not for him, despite being, in Tommy’s words, “smoking”. So Steve got his act together, and waited for her by her locker after basketball so that he could try to break up with her. After all, it had only been a couple of weeks. There probably wouldn’t be any hard feelings.

Becky had debate club after school, which went later than Steve’s basketball practice by about half an hour, so, like usual, he sat in the mostly empty hallway and did math homework as he waited.

Tommy and Carol usually would have waited with him, but they were going to dinner with Tommy’s parents, and didn’t want to be late, so Steve waved them off with good humor. He’d only been waiting for a few minutes when Nancy Wheeler darted out of the English classroom nearest him, her nose in an essay with a worried look on her face, and tripped over his leg.

“Whoa!” Steve steadied her with a hand on her elbow, his own notebook slipping off his lap as he reached up quickly.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going at all.” Wheeler’s essay was slightly crumpled in her fist, but she’d managed not to drop anything. She smoothed it out sheepishly and stacked it on top of the pile of notebooks she was carrying.

“Nah, it’s okay,” said Steve. He grabbed his math notes off the floor, just happy to have his mind off of his math homework as well as his upcoming confrontation with Becky. “You in a hurry, Wheeler?”

“No,” she sighed, “just distracted. I—sorry, I’m sure you don’t want to hear about it—”

“Well, now I do,” Steve found himself saying. “Go on.”

Flustered, she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Well, I, um. I’m re-applying for journalism club for this year, I just…”

“Yeah?” Steve prompted, his curiosity getting the better of him.

“I don’t know. It’s silly, but I’m just not sure if I really want to. I was in the club last year,” she rushed to explain, her arms crossed tight over her notebooks. “I want to try something new, like yearbook or something, but I might not be any good at it, and since I’ve already done a year of journalism it seems a little late, I guess.”

“I don’t think so.” Steve shrugged. He understood that kind of apprehension, but Wheeler was only a sophomore. She had time. “I mean…what’s the worst that can happen? If you try something else, you might like it. Or maybe not. You can always quit or, y’know, try something different.”

Wheeler was quiet for a moment, serious, her chin tilted down and her brow furrowed. Steve didn’t know her very well, had barely spoken to her in passing, but he thought it sounded a bit like a contemplative silence.

“You actually might be right,” she acknowledged finally, sounding a little surprised.

“You know what they say,” Steve pointed out, grinning at the thought of actually giving such simple good advice to someone smarter than himself by far. “Even a broken clock, et cetera, et cetera.”

Nancy huffed out a laugh, and as she smiled, he saw her whole face transform. 

Steve was hit all at once with how beautiful she was, and found it suddenly alarming that he never noticed it before. Lots of girls in Hawkins were pretty. _Becky_ was pretty.

But when Nancy Wheeler smiled, her eyes lit up, her face glowed…the whole stupid shebang. It was ridiculous and cheesy and unlike anything he had ever seen before. It was like a ray of sun on her face, like the feeling of flying. It was like Steve had never seen anything beautiful before, like this was the first time, and her smile seemed to last forever.

“Well, then, Wheeler,” he said, hoping that the moment after her laugh when he couldn’t breathe didn’t seem like the eternity it was for him. “Good luck.”

“Oh, come on, Steve,” she rolled her eyes. Her arms were still crossed across her notebooks. “It’s just Nancy.”

“Then good luck, Nancy,” Steve corrected himself, unable to draw his gaze away from her wry eyes, the curve of her jaw. He felt like he had stars in his eyes, and he hoped she couldn’t see. He didn’t even know her, not really, so why couldn’t he look away?

“Thanks! Sorry for totally spilling my guts about my stupid journalism club stuff, but, you know….” She hesitated, her lips twisting into a shyer half-smile than the first. “Thanks anyway.”

“No problem,” said Steve, and wondered how many different smiles she had, and if all of them would be just as lovely and earth-shatteringly important as the first two.

“See you around,” she called over her shoulder, shooting him one last look before disappearing around the corner down the hall.

“See you,” Steve replied, a little too late, and let out a long breath, sitting up to rub one hand across his face. He couldn’t seem to scrub away the dopey grin, though, and it took him all of ten minutes of waiting to remember that he really, really needed to break up with Becky.

Carol and Tommy would never let him live it down if they knew how gone he was for a smile from a prissy sophomore with straight As and white sweaters.

Nancy Wheeler. Who knew?

Steve made up excuses to talk to her after that, and flirt with her a little, and she flirted back. He watched her and listened to her when she spoke, and began to realize that maybe the reason she was so beautiful wasn’t because she was perfect, but because she had a good heart.

It had only been a few weeks, but Steve was blown away by how much he liked her. And when he finally had the chance to kiss her, he hesitated, finding himself suddenly horribly unsure.

She smiled that wry smile that absolutely made her glow, and said, “Are you gonna kiss me?”

So he did, and he got to do it again and again and again.

At least, until Will Byers disappeared, and Barbara Holland disappeared after that, and Nancy started hanging out with Jonathan Byers, and Steve royally screwed himself over by being the giant asshole he actually was.

To be completely honest, he’d never realized that he _was_ an asshole, just as much of one as Tommy and Carol were, because he’d always waved it away, assumed he was better than them because he stood by and rolled his eyes sometimes.

He got away from the fight, of course, with Tommy’s help, but even as he ran, he could still see the expression on Jonathan’s face, and that expression stuck with him. He’d done that. No matter what Jonathan and Nancy had or hadn’t done, _Steve_ had done _that_. He’d put that expression on the face of a guy who’d just lost his little brother, and he hadn’t even felt bad until he was getting it hammered into his face.

And Nancy…he’d seen it in her face, that she hadn’t cheated on him. Sure, she wasn’t telling him something, but Steve thought maybe he could guess, and that maybe it had something to do with Barbara Holland. Possibly with Will Byers, too, if Jonathan was any indication.

Of course Steve had as good as told her that he didn’t want anything to do with helping her find Barb when she tried to talk to him about it, but he was too caught up in himself and his own stupid problems with his parents that he didn’t care at all. And even when he’d apologized…why would she want to tell him about it again, when he’d treated her like that the first time around?

It all came down to him and his selfishness. When he stood by and let Carol and Tommy write those things about them, when he lashed out at Jonathan and said possibly the worst things he’d ever said to anyone—it was because he was selfish. Hadn’t cared about anything but himself.

So Steve lay on the ground, taking Jonathan’s punches, and realized that he had never been a hero, only a villain, despite whatever good intentions he’d once had. Despite Nancy’s smile.

It was sitting on his car, with a cold can of soda on his eye, that he decided it needed to stop.

That was it. He was done being the kind of person who didn’t feel bad about hurting other people, and he was done being selfish.

Two years later, Steve wasn’t sure what he would have done without that wake-up call.

Where would he be if he hadn’t gone to apologize to Jonathan? What if he’d gotten in his car and driven away instead of finding the guts to go back in and pick up the nail bat?

What kind of person would Steve be if he hadn’t had a whole year of living in Nancy’s light, of seeing Nancy’s good heart and feeling loved, before it all came crashing down? What if he’d missed Dustin Henderson when he went to apologize to Nancy, and driven away from the Wheeler’s house by himself?

What would have happened if he hadn’t been at the junkyard to fight off the demodogs for the kids; what if they’d been alone and hadn’t made it until the dogs were called off, or what if he hadn’t been able to step between Billy Hargrove and Lucas Sinclair?

What might have gone wrong if they’d gone to the tunnels without him and not been able to get out fast enough, before Eleven closed the gate? What about Dustin, if he had gotten into the Russian elevator alone, and been captured?

Steve didn’t have a perfect track record—far from it, in fact—but he was doing better than he’d ever done before, and maybe he’d even made a difference. It certainly made a difference in him.

He lay on the ground, beat all to hell again, but this time he wasn’t alone, and, well, that was something.

Robin telling him about Mrs. Click’s class from sophomore year, though…that really got him. Sometimes, Steve could almost make himself forget how much of an utter douche he’d really been back then, before he fought inter-dimensional monsters and snuck the kids into movies and scooped ice cream and got his ass kicked roughly once a year.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he told her, the weight of regret heavy on his chest, “having those things isn't all that great. Seriously.”

Steve sighed, his thoughts going to when Nancy’s smile was the most important thing in the world, and he could see it every day. To the pettiness of breaking Jonathan’s camera and walking away. He’d had it all, yeah; Nancy, the popularity, the high school star status, and everything that came with it, but he hadn’t deserved it.

She was the first person he ever really loved who loved him, too, and she filled the empty space in his heart where his family should be with friendship and affection. But she made her choice, which was what mattered in the end—and none of that mattered hardly at all next to Hawkins almost getting destroyed and people going missing and dying.

“It just baffles me,” he admitted to Robin quietly. “Everything that people tell you is important, everything that people say you should care about, it's all just…” Steve huffs out a bittersweet laugh. He can still see her lips moving, her blouse, red with punch. “Bullshit. But I guess you gotta mess up to figure things out, right?”

At least, he hoped so. Messing up with Nancy and Jonathan…that made him stop and look at himself. It made him braver, it gave him Dustin and the rest of the kids, who he was fond of in the way his parents were never fond of him. It even gave him back Nancy, in a different way, and Jonathan, too, to boot.

Steve honestly didn’t mind anymore that he’d lost Tommy, and Carol, and his crown, and most of his dignity to Billy Hargrove. He had a moral compass that he could stick with, and a bat to fight the monsters, and a solid bit of courage, and his hair, which everyone had always agreed was Steve’s best trait, anyway.

And along with all of that, he had people who understood. After all, the kids and Nance and Jonathan and Mrs. Byers and Chief Hopper understood everything that nobody else could, and now he had Robin, who kind of understood, too.

Steve would rather be here, about to die as a pretty okay person in a Russian base with a girl who might actually be his best friend, than change a single thing since the moment he tasted blood and guilt and turned his life around.

So, yeah, maybe Steve Harrington’s defining moment was getting his ass kicked by Jonathan Byers, but maybe that was just how it was meant to be.

Of course, despite Steve thinking he was going to die, Dustin pulled through and saved their asses at the last second, with Erica’s help—and Steve did not want to be the one to explain this whole thing away to _her_ parents, yeesh.

(Steve found their nick-of-time rescue incredibly funny at the time, and then became incredibly grateful for it later, when the drugs were out of his system, and he was scrubbing the blood off his face in Mrs. Byers’ bathroom and realizing that the Russians were halfway to ripping out his fingernails with a set of pliers.)

But Dustin and Erica did save them, and they got out of the mall’s bowels, only to almost die again, only to send Hopper and Mrs. Byers back down there, and then to take Dustin and Erica out to the radio on the hill, only to go back to the mall and almost die _again_.

And so Steve sat on the back of an ambulance with a shock blanket over his shoulders and ignored his cracked ribs until they let him go over and hug Dustin, and see for himself that all the kids were okay, which took him longer than he might like to admit. Robin sat next to him and went to hug Dustin with him and checked on the kids with him, and then left for home with her mom, who was distraught, but not before hugging Steve too.

“We’ll get another job,” she told him wryly, tears in her eyes, and was careful of his ribs, and Steve hugged her back harder than he should have even though it hurt like holy hell.

Nobody actually told Steve that Hopper didn’t make it out, but they didn’t need to, so Steve was the one to give the EMTs and the lab coat guy the Hendersons’ phone number, and the Wheelers’, and the Sinclairs’, and to suddenly realize that Billy was dead, and that he couldn’t come pick Max up because, well.

Mrs. Byers realized at some point that the world outside Will and Jonathan and Eleven existed, and had to go off and talk to the lab coat guy, and Steve watched Nancy hug Mike for a really long time, and also watched Mike let Nancy hug him for a really long time before he gently removed himself and went along to Eleven.

Steve waited until Mrs. Henderson arrived to pick Dustin up, on the edge of hysterics, and until Mike and Nancy’s mom got there to take them, worry harsh in her eyes, and until both Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair showed up in their bathrobes to listen to Erica and Lucas explain themselves. They all went home, and Mrs. Byers cornered Steve and made him promise to come to their house, and not go home alone, and Steve watched the mall burn, still.

He watched until one of the EMTs came back to ask if he needed to call his parents, and then he went and found his car, still parked at the far end of the parking lot like always.

It was untouched, like absolutely nothing had happened and like Hopper wasn’t dead and like Steve hadn’t been almost killed by a bunch of Russians in a secret lair underneath a mall only a few hours before. And when Steve started the engine and drove to the Byers’ house, he could only think of how things might have been different if he hadn’t taken a good few hits to his face and his ego in that alley that day.

He thought about the whole thing for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time, thanked his lucky stars.

(Steve still had to go to the Byers’ house, and clean off the blood, and start panicking about his fingernails, and maneuver into one of Jonathan’s old t-shirts around his cracked ribs, and sleep fitfully on their couch, and wake up in the middle of the night to remember that the bat never even made it out of his trunk this time.

But that was okay, because Steve also still had to get another job with Robin, and drive the kids around, and go out to eat with Jonathan and Nancy, and make cookies and lasagna for Mrs. Byers, and meet Dustin’s girlfriend Suzie, so. Everything might be almost fine, at least eventually.)

Steve Harrington knew who he was, and that was cool with him—even the part about Jonathan Byers kicking his ass.


End file.
